Reid told the Huffington Post that Cruz, whose effort to defund the Affordable Care Act led to the government shutdown and brought the United States close to default, could still learn a thing or two about legislating.

"Ted Cruz is smart," Reid said. "He has always been able to talk down to people. He is now in the Senate. People are as smart as he is. He can't talk down to anyone anymore. But he has still not accepted that in his own head. He still thinks he's smarter than everybody else. He might be able to work a calculus problem better than I can. But he can't legislate better than I can."

Cruz's intelligence has been widely acknowledged by both his colleagues on Capitol Hill and his former peers from his law school days. A profile on Cruz in a recent issue of GQ quoted a Harvard Law School roommate who said that the junior senator from Texas refused to study with anyone who hadn't been an undergraduate student at Harvard, Princeton or Yale.